Actually, I find this thing has given me more laughs than anything I can remember.

If you use a sensible email agent then you won't propagate this virus.

If you use a sensible computer operating system (Mac or Unix these days, I suppose) you're completely immune from it.

If you follow the standard, sensible rules for configuring your system and dealing with received email you won't have been affected by this at all (ok, it's propagation is clever so that if you're hit by a "second wave" copy of it it will appear to have been sent by someone you know).

So its shutting down Government email systems just shows how inadequate their IT provision/training is.

And if you don't like it - complain to Bill Gates for supplying the world with such stupid tools. If ever you wanted proof that MS's dominance of the desktop computer market is unhealthy then this is it.

BTW it could have been MUCH worse - the distribution of the thing could have used randomly-changed subject lines, and/or the REAL nasty virus could have been installed on a web server which was able to cope with all the "hits" it received.

No, I don't approve of viruses. But I disapprove even more of MS making it almost trivial to distribute them (there are, literally, hundreds of thousands of IT people out there who could have written the distribution side of this thing . . )

Sorry if this offends anyone out there, but these truths need expressing.

(And yes, we received copies of the virus, and no, we weren't affected by it . .)

G.